Is America Doomed to Become a “Throwaway Society”?

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Body
Summary
References

Introduction

In a world that is swiftly changing its pace to be at par with the vast technologies available, it seems that all people are not receiving only the good side of these necessary changes. As our lives have become more convenient and more sophisticated by means of these technologies and innovations, unwanted repercussions have sprouted within the realms of our social relationships and culture that are transforming them to become as disposable as the toilet paper in our bathrooms.

As Alvin Toffler, in his landmark book Future Shock (1970), had described, America is becoming a “throwaway society”, where rapidity and transience have become the “norm”. Are we really doomed to head to a society where we replace friends and partners as easily as we replace what brand of detergent we are using? Do people now become more transient as they move more rapidly to live in different locations to find new friends and mates? Do our present scenarios influence us to have more relationships of shorter duration and less depth and make us feel more confused and disconnected?

Body

Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock is indeed an eye-opening book that described an epic vision of how the “roaring current of change”–job mobility, the decline of the small town, the throwaway consumer society–had left Americans in a state of “shattered stress and disorientation”. Although some parts may become too exaggerated as people might as well wear paper as clothing in the future, some salient points have been raised and are slowly becoming real right before our eyes.

With globalization and liberalization of goods and services worldwide, Alvin Toffler’s prediction is becoming real as new economy of impermanence is flourishing – where we see more throwaway items are consumed designed to meet human needs. This throwaway attitude will not only reflect on the things we could buy, but it will also affect how we deal within the social fabric. This might explain the rising divorce rates and shallow relationships we now uphold with our family and friends.

In fact, the latest statistics revealed that United States ranked 7th with 45.8 percent of new marriages ending in divorce in 2002 (Divorce Magazine, 2008). Although in 2004, divorce cases seemed to have declined – but this decline is also related to the decrease in the number of marriages that have been consummated. In a USA Today report, Jayson (2005) showed that the “U.S. divorce rate is 17.7 per 1,000 married women, down from 22.6 in 1980”. However, “the marriage rate is also on a steady decline: a 50% drop since 1970 from 76.5 per 1,000 unmarried women to 39.9”. Sam Brownback of the New York Times even observed that:

Over the past five decades in the United States, the marriage rate has gone down and the divorce rate has gone up. In 1960, the out-of-wedlock birth rate was 5 percent. Now it is 37 percent. While you can valiantly raise a good child in another setting and we ought to celebrate it when it happens, the best way to rear a child is between a mom and dad bonded together for life. Children brought up with a mom and dad bonded in marriage are, on average, far more likely to succeed in school, avoid crime and live happier and healthier lives. The best way to reduce poverty, fight crime and improve education is to rebuild the family (Brownback 2008, p. 13).

This scenario is much attuned to what Alvin Toffler described as the degradation of social relationships decline, society is more likely to be caught in chaos. When people become disconnected to their social relationships, there is more chance for children to have lower moral values. Also, the impact of having more single-parent families at present is that it can affect the growth and development of children. McLanahan (1997) concluded that “children who grow up with only one biological parent are less successful, on average, than children who grow up with both parents. These differences extend to a broad range of outcomes, and they persist into adulthood” (p. 37).

In his study, McLanahan (1997) found that children of single parents are about twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to have a child before age 20, and less likely to have a steady job in their late teens or early twenties. These negative consequences seem to occur regardless of whether the cause of the parent’s absence is that the mother was never married or that the parents divorced.

Not only did Toffler get it right in the divorce cases, the research also revealed that the upsurge of new technologies desensitized people. For example, research has shown that the amount of time Americans over age twelve played video (and computer) games rose from fifty-nine hours in 2000 to sixty-nine hours in 2003, an increase of 17%. Also, it is believed that the average person in 2003 spent nearly $30 on these games, compared with about $26 in 2000—an increase of 15%.

The marketing research firm NPD Group reported that the video and computer gaming industry sold $11.9 billion in merchandise in 2005, which was up from $11.2 billion in 2003. Of this, computer games accounted for $1.2 billion in 2003 and $1.4 billion in 2005 (Weier, 2007). t is interesting to note that along with the increased number of hours American youth are exposed to video games, violence in school also rose. In fact, there were almost 700,000 violent crimes in American schools in 2000 and 1.87 million crimes reported in 2001 committed by youth ages 12 to 20 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2004).

In 2000, 9% of murders in the United States were committed by youth under the age of 18; this age group accounted for 15% of violent crime arrests in 2001. There are four types of violent criminal acts: murder, felony assault, rape, and robbery (Walker et al., 2004). However, in the school setting, any type of physical aggression and assault is considered to be violence, as is vandalism (damage to school property or the property of others), carrying a weapon, and threatening others with violence.

Summary

Ultimately, we need to do something in order to curb the grim scenarios described by Toffler in Future Shock. We should reap the positive benefits of technologies and innovations, but we should also remember that all the social relationships we have are not merely things that we can easily dispose easily of. We need to go back to the basics and teach our children to value their friends, family and our relationships before they become desensitized to what these technologies have to offer. We can still avoid this “throwaway society” if we begin realizing its ill effects and doing things right by concentrating on being concerned about our society and culture before it’s too late.

References

Brownback, S. (2008). A Family Crisis. New York Times, p. 13.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2004). Violence-related behaviors among high school students—United States, 1991–2003. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 53(29): 651–655.

Divorce Magazine. (2008). World Divorce Statistics. Web.

Jayson, S. (2005). Divorce declining, but so is marriage, USA Today. Web.

McLanahan, Sara S. “Parent absence or poverty: Which matters more?” In G. Duncan & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Consequences of growing up poor (pp. 35-48). New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997.

Toffler, A. (1970). Future Shock. New York: Random House.

Walker, H.M., Ramsey, E. & Gresham, F.M. (2004). Antisocial Behavior in School. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Weier, J.W. (2007). Electronics, the internet, and entertainment media. Electronic America. Detroit: Thomson Gale.

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Is America Doomed to Become a “Throwaway Society”?

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